Okay, it is less than a week to Christmas. I’ve taken a vacation day today, so I can get some things done before Christmas. I’m going to blog a smidge because I haven’t in over a week. There is less time to Christmas than days since my last blog post. I feel like I should freak out now.

Though I have some shopping done, I’m not finished yet. We have partly decorated for Christmas, but aren’t finished yet.

We got an adorable tree from the tree lot where my daughter volunteered. It was one of the largest trees in the small-tree category. It is beautifully full and nicely shaped with a good top branch for the star.

I love the smell of fresh-cut trees. If I put my fingers into the tree water to check its depth, my fingers smell awesome. (I know, that sounds kind of weird, right? But it’s true.) The tree water is like some kind of beautiful fragrant, cold-brewed tea.

We have a smallish artificial tree that we purchased several years ago. We used that last year. It’s getting kind of sad looking. Some of the branches are a little droopy (because the cat likes to climb it) and the fake needles are falling off as much or more than any real needles. Plus it smells so not fresh. It smells like the storage area and old cardboard. Not really something that brings to mind the holiday spirit. I’d need some Glad spruce-scented spray or something to make that one a little more appealing. I should probably dig it out of storage and pitch it.

We went to a wonderful Christmas party on Saturday night where we got to see good friends and eat yummy food. I want to eat more yummy food and see more of our friends. Things get busy.

The past week had some extremely cold days, so if my tomato plants had any life in them at all before they are now completely done for the year. I rescued a few small plants from the balcony and brought them inside during the extreme temperatures. At least it felt like winter while we were thinking about Christmas.

I left one squash out on the balcony which froze rather solidly. It was like a big rock. I could probably take out zombies with that squash. Do not drop it. Once thawed it needs to be eaten or cooked quickly. So we made a large pot of squash soup for dinner yesterday.

The good part of partially freezing is that once thawed, the squash softens up some, so it is much easier to cut than fresh and raw.

But I think generally squash tastes better if it is cooked before being frozen. The squash soup makes a nice compromise. Plus it’s super healthy. Today I still have more squash to use up.

We’re still debating if we should see Santa at the mall this year. We’ve been every year since my daughter was tiny. Now that she’s a teenager, we almost didn’t go last year. But then we did and it was cute. Except that there was a TV crew filming the Santa at the mall. That turned out to be kind of fun and kind of embarrassing for my daughter.

Our mall has had the same man-in-the-red-suit for many many years. So he’s in all of our photos. It was only natural to go back there. I guess the TV crew had the same idea about Santa and was filming a piece on Santa at the mall since he’s been there so long. They didn’t want to use a small child in the piece, so they used my daughter. It was also timing — she just happened to be the next, older child in line when they were filming. It looked cute. She looked very nice on the local TV station.

But a couple of teachers saw her. So back at school they said, “hey, we saw you on the news with Santa!” So it got a little embarrassing for her. (Hey, the TV interviewer even sat on Santa’s lap. I thought there was a lot more potential for embarrassment in that.)

I have reassured my daughter that odds are extremely good that the same thing won’t happen again this year. My biggest hesitation is the line. It’s always massively huge. I hate to take up so much time just waiting. (Though I can bring electronic devices for playing games or writing, so it’s not that bad if I plan it right.) But we missed out on making a reservation since we weren’t sure if we were going. Now that we might go, we’ll have to wait in the line. Hopefully, we can go during a weekday when the line won’t be as long.

My daughter has been busy making lots of peppermint bark for gifts and dipping pretzels in chocolate too. We get to eat all the mistakes and “test” the non-mistakes too. We have very happy taste buds right now. She made more this morning. I need to go find a tin to put it in.